Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Several of you have email me today to send me some of the articles and to get my opinion regarding the latest attack by the right wing nuts against the Gitmo lawyers. Once again they are focusing on the big firms that are representing or that have represented Guantanamo prisoners...but now they have upped the attacks by going after current Department of Justice attorneys who have either represented Guantanamo prisoners or who have worked in big firms that have represented Gitmo prisoners (and believe me there are not enough of them in the DOJ). ThinkProgress looks at some of those attacks here.

This was actually a tactic raised a few years ago which I reported on in the HuffingtonPost here. That attack was quickly put down by the organized bar and I expect the same will happen this time around.

Meanwhile I will just add a little fuel to the fire by pointing out that several of the big law firms that have or still are representing prisoners at Guantanamo also have partners from the far right wing.... Bush's Attorney General Michael Mukasey comes to mind as an example.... perhaps Mr. Mukasey and others should resign if they think it is improper for members of their firm to be protecting the Constitution in this manner.

And if Attorneys like Mukasey think it is ok for their firms to engage in this work (and certainly they knew when they joined their firms of the probono work that their firm were engaged in) then perhaps they should make a public statement supporting the work of their firms.

What's fascinating is the timing of the need to play to the racist/nativist/"tea party" crowd (see, for example, the sudden need to do a 9/11 tribute to Gander, Newfoundland of all places during the Olympics broadcast by the General Electric Corporation-- an interruption of covering actual athletic events for nearly an hour, just as an excuse to show the freaking burning World Trade Center again). And so we see features such charming attributes as the Neo-McCarthyist attack on current and former habeas lawyers ("I have a list of 200 Communists in the State Dept... or is that 9 people with the nerve to represent Muslims in the Justice Dept..."), or the sudden attacks in the UK on Moazzam Begg as recently reported by Andy Worthington (http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2010/02/10/defending-moazzam-begg-and-amnesty-international/)

I'm thinking that after 8 1/2 years of the endlessness justifying the meaningless of the two massive wars which seem to have no end in sight (nor is OBL in sight, either), the corporate power structure simply needs to keep that military/industrial mojo flowing, lest the general malaise create some sort of counter-narrative that devoting such a high percentage of our GDP to torture and homicide is a bad thing... wouldn't want that.

Also, talk about "10 dimensional chess"... these former habeas attorneys are going right into a DOJ that has done its damndest to make exactly the same (or even more totalitarian in some cases) arguments and take the same positions as the Bush Administration... only, of course, the Obama Admin. still gets attacked anyway!

You'd THINK that after a while the Obama Admin. would get the message that trying to placate right wing nuts just has no percentage in it... but then, once one realizes that the Obama Admin. cares only for its hedge fund/investment bank masters, then suddenly everything that's going on takes on perfect clarity.

Subscribe To The Gitmo Blog

About Me

ONE NATION....UNDER SURVEILLANC

NO PLACE TO HIDE

Probably the most important book of 2014 as it gives a comprehensive look at the extent this country of mine has creeped into the bedrooms of all of us across the world-and the importance of hero EDWARD SNOWDEN- in risking his freedom to let all of us know. What we do with that knowledge will say alot about all of us...

WAR CRIMINALS WATCH

Ron Suskind's "The Way of the World"

If you have not read Ron's book then you do not have the whole story about what I have been doing to try to get my clients out ofGuantanamo. Ron kept up with my activities and even followed me around on occasion to get the full story... then he weaved my story in with the stories of other individuals who are concerned with the direction of the United States. I recommend the book to all of you out there who also care about the direction that the US has gone these past eight years and want to work to change things.